Not clear CF. The article says a 50 mg “therapeutic” does was given; is that the same as when it is used criminally? Wikipedia says the recreational dose is higher than that (who knew this was a recreational drug??). That article says the blood must be taken 8-12 hours after the dosage.
Certainly raises the question as to whether a “low dose” could both give the symptoms as described and not be detected. I still think she probably had blood drawn and preserved within 6 hours based on her time line and certainly within 8-12 hours.
First, don’t focus on blood. Kinsman’s blood was not tested for drugs (except alcohol). The test for other drugs was done on urine, which, as far as I can determine, is the standard. The links I read specifically said that blood tests for GHB were inappropriate.
I too wondered about dose, and what dose would be either used recreationally, or for date rape. But as far as I can tell, the drug doesn’t come in a pill; it’s a powder. The person has these GHB salts, and they dissolve them in water, and then-- and then dump some in a drink. There does not seem to be a standard dose. If you look at dstark’s link, the drug users seem to be saying, *experiment with a little bit, and next time if you want more of an effect use more, but don’t use too much. *
I knew that, just not careful enough in the writing. Urine test not blood. No time of collection is given. Police report say they arrived after 4 am. No test is perfect, so you are right that it is possible it doesn’t tell anything. Then again, it is also possible (and possibly more likely given her timeline) that it does not support her claim of being drugged. Again, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t assaulted.
PubMed is an excellent public place to look for studies. (use the drug name for the drug) PubMed is US National Library of Medicine from the National Institutes of Health. (The link that CF posted is from PubMed).
You made the claim, @momofthreeboys. I don’t have to do the research to substantiate any wild claim you may dream up. It’s for you to substantiate it, or else we will think you are just blowing smoke. I substantiated my claim that GHB has been found to exit from the body in less than six hours.
The victim enters the bar at 11:30 pm. Is back home at 2:30 am. Was at the bar for a while before leaving in the cab. So let’s put the alleged drugging at 12:30 am to 1:00 am.
That’s one heck of a drug that can be administered by an amateur at the exact precise dosage (and when also combined with enough booze that the victim was still up at 0.48 BAC 3-4 hours later) that doesn’t cause the typical obvious symptoms of drugging (vomiting, unconsciousness, loss of coordination) as observed by the friends at the bar.
But then suddenly hammers the victim with incapacitating impairment which facilitates the incident.
But then recedes so quickly that the victim is soon walking, talking, texting and safely riding the back of a scooter within an hour or so. Even though Fang’s sources say the effects typically last 3-6 hours.
And then also subsides quickly enough so that it doesn’t register in a tox scan that was written up at 7:25 am (and so presumably administered sooner). Even though Mom’s data says it can typically be detected via urine for 12 hours. Fang says six hours instead, and it is quite possible the test was given in under six hours from the alleged drugging.
Plus, there’s the head bonk (rather than the alleged drugging) that didn’t happen that was claimed to cause the black out.
LOL, well this one’s over…all ready been through 2 avenues with nothing in the win column. She won’t sue Winston I don’t think but it will be interesting to see later in the year (or sooner) what happens to FSU and their defense of the Title IX accusations. They are taking the most literal perspective of the Title IX requirements and the recommendations from the Dear Colleague advisory that I’ve happened upon.
Why do you say those are the typical obvious symptoms of drugging? Nobody is taking GHB themselves, recreationally, to get those effects. They take it to get effects similar to alcohol’s: relaxation, disinhibition, euphoria.
Mom doesn’t have any data that says that. She has an assertion.
Except that it does not support her claim. I have to say that the evidence that she was drugged seems extremely weak to me. I’m not sure a real judge would even allow a prosecutor to pursue such a claim given the evidence.
People who practice law, especially criminal law, find that people do inexplicable things all the time. They lie when it would be to their advantage to tell the truth, and the reverse. There may be facts we don’t know that could explain this behavior, or there may not be.
As we discussed earlier, I think it’s problematic to assert that a person’s decision to report a crime is itself evidence that the accused is guilty of the crime.
You don’t have to practice law to know people do inexplicable things.
I didn’t say Winston was guilty.
But to call Erica a liar doesn’t make sense either.
As far as the drug test goes, there are many false negatives. The drug can be undetectable under 6 hours. The test was not definitive. The test doesn’t prove anything. Also, If Erica wasn’t drugged, she still could have been raped.
There is no proof that Erica wasn’t raped or Winston is guilty in this case.
I think it’s problematic for people like us, looking from the outside, NOT to assert that a person’s decision to report a crime is relevant to determining whether the accused is guilty. Because it is relevant.
We are not judges. We are not on a jury. We just want to figure out what happened. If it’s true that the majority of sexual assault accusations are true accusations, then that is the fact of the matter and we can’t pretend otherwise.
Now, if we were judges or jury members, then it would be unethical to take the fact of the accusation into account. But we’re not judges, we’re not jury members, so we don’t have to ignore facts.
@Momofthreeboys, thanks for directing me to the FSU response.
Agree. I just realized that the current FSU president John Thrasher was appointed in September 2014, so he was only on the job 2 months when the details of the case went public. So the question is not what Thrasher knew or should have known, but what his predecessor knew which makes it all the more complicated.
What the response claims is that the Athletic Department didn’t have to advise the Title IX office that Winston was under investigation because they didn’t know that the alleged victim was another student.
It makes what is to me a rather convoluted claim that since the members of the Athletic Department weren’t the “appropriate persons” under Title IX and didn’t have the authority over student conduct or Title IX processes, it didn’t make any difference whether they knew about the accusation or not. To me not have authority is separate from not advising those who do.
It’s still unclear (at least to me) whether the Athletic Department was required by FSU or by Title IX to pass this information to the Title IX office.
Whether the Athletic Department had an obligation to advise the President and Board (or actually did advise the past president) is more of an internal matter for FSU to sort out. I think when Thrasher came in, he and the board missed the opportunity to clean house at the Athletic Department, but I guess they were so far into the raging river of bad publicity that they had to keep going on the same course.
According to FSU’s response both Winston (and Kinsman) both provided “live testimony” to Judge Harding.
The reason I was interested in knowing whether Winston testified is that I think this raises another point about the fairness of campus Title IX procedures. If the accused is advised by their attorney to clam-up (presumably to avoid self incrimination) then his side of the story will not be revealed and under a preponderance of evidence standard the scale will tip toward the party who does speak up.
Take he case of Joshua Strange at Auburn University. Because Strange was under investigation by the police his lawyer advised him not to testify. Under Auburn’s rules, both parties’ attorney’s could be present at the hearing but could not speak.
